Aqra bil-Malti
Bangladeshi recruitment agencies have identified Malta as an attractive country to send thousands of unskilled workers accepting to earn just €600 per month for a raft of jobs, The Shift can reveal.
Maltese companies are being inundated with e-mails and phone calls from Bangladeshi agencies, based in Dhaka, asking them for job vacancies and whether they are interested in doing business with them.
To make the offer more attractive, the same agencies are offering Maltese employers a ‘gift’ of some €1,500 one-time lump sum for every Bangladeshi they employ.
Although it is unclear who will be forking out the ‘gift’, experts in the sector told The Shift that this will probably be paid by the workers themselves, forking it out of their initial salaries once they start working in Malta.
Identity Malta sources confirmed that these recruitment agencies are making significant headway in Malta, so much so that the number of Bangladeshis issued a work permit has significantly increased in the past months.
The offers being made by the agencies are illegal under Maltese laws, as they fail to meet the statutory minimum wage, which all employees in Malta must earn. This currently stands at €925 a month.
Also, ‘gifts’ such as the €1,500 per worker being offered to Maltese employers are not in line with the law.
Part of an email showing the availability of Bangladeshis wanting to work in Malta for €600 a month.
Still, Bangladeshis with these irregular conditions are being employed, as both Identity Malta and the Department for Employment and Industrial Relations (DIER) are not in a position to make the necessary investigations, mostly due to understaffing and expertise.
A source at Identity Malta said that these recruits are handed contracts that, on paper, show their employment is according to law. In reality, the employees earn much less than what is declared in their contracts.
In the past years, Malta has become a European hub for cheap labour in an attempt to keep average wages as low as possible.
Third-country nationals are the only available employees for unskilled posts such as deliverymen, waiters, agriculture workers, construction assistants, and many others based on the premise that Maltese nationals are not prepared to work in such conditions, which barely make ends meet.
At the same time, most of the locally available unskilled employees on the market have been put on the government payroll in many vote-buying exercises.
The island has increased its intake of third-country national workers from less than 10,000 in 2013 to over 100,000 in 2022, according to the latest available statistics.
While this has increased Malta’s economic growth, it is also the main cause of decaying infrastructure, such as electricity, water and sewage, uninterrupted traffic chaos, overdevelopment, claustrophobia and social inequalities, among other issues.
According to Eurostat figures, in 2022, Malta issued 38,000 permits to third-country nationals or 71 permits per 1,000 inhabitants, ten times higher than the EU average for the same year.
“mostly due to understaffing” – then probably Identity Malta and the Department for Employment and Industrial Relations should start employing Bangladeshis ….ahhhh wait they don’t vote do they….hmmm
This is tantamount to human slavery. How can anyone have a decent living with €600 monthly?
Waitering service is definitely not unskilled.
It must be as hardly any Maltese work in hospitality industry.
Total slavery. Who can live on 600 euros a month here in Malta. These people’s eyes should be opened BEFORE they commit themselves.
All this has a very ugly name – “tratta di uomini” is the one given to it by Pope Francis.
“Modern-day slavery” is also as correct a description.
Are you serious? Considering how deep your investigations normally are,I expected much more. What about the local criminal organisation run by Castille? The agencies are only represantitives of the local network. It is here that the great scheme is actually run. The bulk of the premium paid/collected from the pay chech goes to the local masterminds. How can you possibly rest on what IM says to the press? Who issues the work and residency permits abusively in record time? The scheme Jason Azzopardi and NET unearthed is all part of this. It is so lucrative (e.g. 100 pax x €10,000 = €1million) for Labour, and so organised, that yes, now even govt departments are recruiting through the local temping agencies. These poor souls are even promised €1,200 per month before signing . But once here, they are made to sign a take it or leave it contract for a fraction of that wage. They can’t refuse – they have no money to pay their fare home, they will be declared illegal residents, and the premium is still hanging on their and their families head.
Human trafficking galore. And who are the intermediary agents in Malta bringing all these people from the other end of the world? Are they part of the Labour Party’s inner circles? I am sure that they are, otherwise, this madness will stop.
I don’t understand what the point of these control offices is if they don’t actually control anything, so now that they know which companies have used this method why do they continue to do nothing. Maybe maybe the government has an agreement with companies for low-cost labour, maybe they increase rent prices and everyone is happy. Everything turns into a new one where we think that Malta is full of work, full of tourists, the economy is skyrocketing, but in truth it is totally the opposite…
What is to stop that Maltese company from firing the employee within a month whilst pocketing that “gift”? This is a racket and the only way to stop it is to impose an immediate moratorium on all permits to third country nationals.
The country is breaking on all fronts. After a while all these TCNs have a right to bring their families to Malta under the reunification of families directive. There is no way that this is sustainable.